CHRISTIAN WILHELM DIETRICH
1712 Weimar – 1774 Dresden
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Blind Beggar - 1757
Chiaroscuro woodcut in black and green. Size of sheet: 20.3 x 16.5 cm.
Linck 78.II/III.
Provenance: E.Kaps (Lugt 3549); I.Kaps (Lugt 3551); Bessange sale, 25/10/2010; Norwegian Private Collection.
Very fine, strong impression of this rare print.
Comparative impressions: Baltimore Museum of Art – inv.no. 1946.112.8641; Rijksmuseum – inv.no. RP-P-1906-2278.
£2,100.-
Christian Wilhelm Dietrich: Blind Beggar, 1757
Dietrich was a very successful painter in his time. Early on in his career, the artist was appointed court-painter to the king of Saxony. In 1746 he was made keeper of the Dresden Gallery. He was also made a professor in the Academy of Arts in Dresden. Dietrich never developed a style of his own, but produced works in the manner of several older Italian and 17th-century Dutch and Flemish artists, like the present woodcut. It shows clear influence of such genre artists as Adriaen van Ostade or Adriaen Brouwer.
Phillip Sandhurst, The Masterpieces of European Art, 1876, p.110;
Linck, F.J., Monographie der von dem ... Hofmaler und Professor ... C. W. E. Dietrich radirten, geschabten und in Holz geschnittenen malerischen Vorstellungen, 1846.